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Major Lowballing!

03-28-2013, 03:14 PM

A lawn service guy just dropped off a flyer on my front door and I am not very happy. The average yard where I live goes for $35-$40 per mow, this knock off is advertising mowing weekly for $15-$20 and this includes trimming and blowing!!! He is offering Spring/Fall Clean Ups, Flower Bed Maintenance and Fertilizing for only $20 each!!! Are you seriously kidding me?!? I can't compete with this crap when I am just starting up my lawn business. What a lowballer!

A lawn service guy just dropped off a flyer on my front door and I am not very happy. The average yard where I live goes for $35-$40 per mow, this knock off is advertising mowing weekly for $15-$20 and this includes trimming and blowing!!! He is offering Spring/Fall Clean Ups, Flower Bed Maintenance and Fertilizing for only $20 each!!! Are you seriously kidding me?!? I can't compete with this crap when I am just starting up my lawn business. What a lowballer!

Hire him to do your yard, if he is anygood hire him to do all your yard, then sit at home and make money while he ruins his equipment

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I have a min $25 drop fee. If my gate drops your paying $25. End of story. I don't care if I drop it and you have a $40 yard and you tell me before I start you don't want it mowed. Mark it down as a DF no now per cust. And charge them $25. So he has already low balled me out of the picture. Here is the thing. People who don't wanna pay, don't care about their yard and just don't wanna do it will hire him. People who like their yard make good money and want someone decent to do it, will pay a decent price to get it done. I won't now a customers yard if they don't care about their yard. It looks bad on my company when they see me mowing a yard every other week and it always looks like ****.

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Anyone can put a flyer together and hand it out like that but it takes a lot more out of you to show up and be consistent with your service. You also need to charge enough to make it worthwhile. At these prices, it won't last long. Either the prices will need to go up or this person might just stop doing it.

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Anyone can put a flyer together and hand it out like that but it takes a lot more out of you to show up and be consistent with your service. You also need to charge enough to make it worthwhile. At these prices, it won't last long. Either the prices will need to go up or this person might just stop doing it.

Steve, I would so most likely it will be the ladder, because where I live there's no way he'll make enough to profit. I mean how are you going to do a Spring/Fall Clean Up or Flower Bed Maintenance or any type of Fertilizing Treatment and only charge $20 for each service? There's no way, and I'm not going to let it bother me either, because I know eventually he'll be gone and I'll be getting phone calls from people saying "My lawn service guy hasn't been here in awhile." and I'll be telling myself "Yep, lowballer couldn't stay in business, so more business for me." LOL

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When I have a customer that wants to go with a lowballer I add in simple services to make them feel like their getting thier money back. Like airation, edging, dethatching.

But what is up with all the new company's I know we all must start somewhere but some of these set ups are crazy.

Greg's right....we see this all the time. You have to have your business stand out and bundle services.

If you're able, talk to the homeowers and tell them about your business and your equipment. It will be very different from the guy charging $15-$20 and they'll see the value in spending more money with you and you'll be dependable.

Family owned business established in 1983 based in Lakeville, MN. Servicing Minneapolis South Metro area working in Grounds Maintenance including fertilization and spraying, Landscaping, Hard Scapes, Irrigation, Water Features, Concrete Work, Weatherization, and Association Management.

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Greg's right....we see this all the time. You have to have your business stand out and bundle services.

If you're able, talk to the homeowers and tell them about your business and your equipment. It will be very different from the guy charging $15-$20 and they'll see the value in spending more money with you and you'll be dependable.

I plan on having a good communication link with my customers once my business is completely started. I plan on explaining to them exactly what I will be doing for them and making sure they understand what will be happening before I even begin work on their property. I won't be offering Fertilizing, however to make up for this my service list includes: Mowing, Edging, Mulching, Spring/Fall Clean-Ups, Flower Bed Maintenance, and I'm going to add Power Washing also now. I will be explaining to my customers that I will be treating their property as if it was my own and I will make sure that their property looks as they want it too.

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If you have a lot of lowballing in the area with such flyers, you could create some marketing that explains the benefits of hiring a professional to someone who does it part time. I am sure you could come up with a lot of pros for you and cons for them and that could educate the customer and make you look great.

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If you have a lot of lowballing in the area with such flyers, you could create some marketing that explains the benefits of hiring a professional to someone who does it part time. I am sure you could come up with a lot of pros for you and cons for them and that could educate the customer and make you look great.

Yeah, I am planning on using the professional flyer with the guy who is about to fall while mowing grass on this website that talks about insurance, etc. to educate potential customers, this is going to come in very handy.

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This happened to me. I called him up and told him doing lawns at 25 $ each.. ill pay u to do mine. Hes a ***. So on the bottom of the flyer is a number where he hsd them msde. I ordered 50k flyers and 100k cards. Boom baby!!